Columns | Displaced Voices

The Guatemalan Asylum Seeker Who Was Almost Deported—to Mexico

I told him clearly in that interview: “I am here because I’m afraid I will be killed in my country. I cannot return to Guatemala. I will die if I do.” The immigration officer acted like he did not understand.

By Rosa

As told to Jessica Goudeau

This is Displaced Voices, a monthly column by Jessica Goudeau which tells first-person stories of refugees, asylum-seekers, and economic migrants. The as-told-to format gives them control over their narratives; when appropriate, we’ll use pseudonyms to protect their identity.

Jessica’s Note: I met Rosa at an ESL class offered in Austin to refugees and asylum-seekers. One of the teachers connected us and took us into the library at the church building where the classes are held so we could have a quiet space. Rosa told me this story using short sentences and a matter of fact tone; she tugged on her ponytail sometimes when she was trying to remember the right word in Spanish, a second language for both of us. I hardly had to ask any questions at all.

When I lived in Guatemala, my boyfriend tried to kill me three times. He was angry at me because I could not have a baby. He had a lot of rage that was only for me. He beat me; I endured a lot of violence when I was with him. On those three occasions, he choked me so hard I thought I would die. I went to stay with a friend, but the first two times, he captured me and made me come home with him.

The third time I showed up at my friend’s house with bruises around my neck, she said, “I can’t help you escape from him anymore because he’s going to kill me too. Two times he’s tried to strangle you; if he finds you again, I can’t imagine what he’ll do to you.” The only option she could see was to find someone who could help me escape the country. She had a friend who knew a coyote. He agreed to help me get out of Guatemala. My friend did all of it. She saved my life.

I left Guatemala alone. I was sad to leave my family, sad to make that trip by myself. But my fear was greater than my sadness.

In Mexico, the coyote who helped me cross the border took me to another coyote. We walked all across Mexico. He took us across a river and told us we were in a place called Piedras Negras, inside the United States. I was the only woman in a large group of men. The coyote said, “Wait right here, I’ll be right back. I’m going to find the person that will take you to San Antonio.” And he left us on the other side of the river. But he did not come back.

I was very afraid that something would happen to me. When night fell, I could hear coyotes around us. I was afraid of the men and of the animals.

Eventually, we realized he had left us behind. We started walking. We were in the middle of the mountains in the desert. There were fences we came to sometimes and we had to climb them. We were walking through private ranches. We had no direction and no guide, we were just wandering. We were lost. We knew only that we were in the United States.

In the mountains, we drank dirty water. We were so thirsty. The water made us sick. We were starving. We found some corn left out for animals on a ranch and we ate that, but it only made us sicker.

On the third day, when we were climbing a fence, I fell and sprained my ankle badly. I limped for the next two days. My ankle was swollen and hot when you touched it.

On the fifth day, we found a rancher who was giving food to his cattle. We asked him where we were and told him we were lost. He spoke a little Spanish. He told us we were eight hours away from Carrizo Springs, which is the only reason I have any idea where we ended up.

He told us, “If you walk all night, you’ll arrive there around 6 a.m. Do you have someone who will meet you there?”

We said, “No, but we’re just looking for someone who can help us because the person who brought us abandoned us. We would rather be caught by immigration than die in this desert.”

“Then you should go to this city and see if there is someone there who can help you.”

We walked all night and arrived at six in the morning, just like he said. Arriving so early, we did not see the immigration officers waiting outside the city. They were wearing green uniforms that blended in with the trees behind them. When we showed up, they were there in the forest and they caught us. They yelled at us, “Stop!” They arrested us.

First they took us to la hielera. It’s the first place immigration takes you when you’re detained for entering the country. There they get your name, your birthdate, all kinds of information. They took away our shoelaces, our ponytail holders, our belts. I was not wearing any jewelry, but they took those kinds of things away from the other people.

The man who talked to me spoke a little bit of Spanish. At the time, I spoke Spanish but not as well as I do now—my native language is Quiché, the language of my city. We did not always understand each other. He did not believe that I was from Guatemala. He kept saying “No, you’re from Mexico!” I told him, “No, I’m from Guatemala!” He said, “No, I’m putting Mexico on here, then I’m going to put you in with the people from Mexico and send you back there.” I said, “I am Guatemalan.” Finally, I showed him my Guatemalan ID; then he finally believed me. I told him that I did not want to return to Mexico because there’s so much violence in Mexico.

I told him clearly in that interview: “I am here because I’m afraid I will be killed in my country. I cannot return to Guatemala. I will die if I do.”

When I told him that, he acted like he did not understand; I’m not sure if he understood me or not. When I told him I was afraid, he wrote something in the computer, but I don’t know what it was. Finally, he printed something out and told me to sign it. All of it was in English—I didn’t speak any English! He didn’t tell me that they were deportation orders; I asked him what it was and he just kept saying, “Afirme aqui, afirme aqui” in Spanish. I should not have signed the papers, but I did not know that he was tricking me.

After that, he locked me in la hielera. The floor and the benches were concrete. There was a heavy metal door with a small window. The room was small. There were eight or ten women in the room. Women went to one room, children to another.

Many of the women were mothers and they were crying. They were separated from their children. The women wanted to know how their children were, where they had taken them. The officials only had one response: “We do not have that information at this time. You need to wait.”

Wait, wait, wait, they said, while the women cried for their children.

I felt very afraid. I kept knocking on the door asking them to give me some pain medication or something. They did not.

They took me to a detention center that had the word ‘GEO’ on the wall; I never knew the name of the place. It was a place for prisoners, not just an immigration detention center. I think it was in Del Rio, Texas. I stayed there for eleven days.

My roommate there was a woman with a dagger; I don’t know how she was able to keep a dagger. She kept yelling at me, “I don’t want you here!” She was very racist, she said horrible things about my skin and my people. She spoke a little Spanish and she told me, “I’m going to kill you.”

She slept on the bottom, I slept on the top bunk. For eleven days, I didn’t sleep much because I was afraid she would hurt me.

My ankle was very swollen still and I was sick from being in la heliera. Other women from Guatemala had to bring me my meals because my foot was so swollen I could not walk. Another prisoner who was in jail because she had killed another person asked me, “Why haven’t they taken you to the doctor yet?”

I said, “They told me the doctor is not there.”

“That’s a lie! When the social worker gets here, I’m going to tell her that these people don’t want to give you attention and you’re crying with pain.” She complained to the social worker, asking to take me to the doctor or at least give me some pain pills or crutches: “This woman can’t even get up to eat because she can’t walk!” The only person who advocated for me was this woman who had killed someone; she was the only one who listened to me. The next day, they brought me some crutches.

On the sixth of my eleven days there, a man arrived who was assigned by the state. He separated those of us who had entered the country without documents from the other prisoners. He told us, “Tomorrow you are all going to the court. You’re going to see a judge. There will be one lawyer for all of you. When the judge asks if you’re guilty, you must all say ‘yes.’ You entered illegally and you are guilty, so you must say ‘yes’ because you are criminals.”

No one told me that I could ask for asylum. I had told the first official immediately and I thought he put it in the note on the computer. I did not realize I was supposed to tell the judge. I was thinking, ‘If I say I’m not guilty, probably they’ll send me back to Guatemala, and I don’t want to return, so it’s better to do what they say. Otherwise, I’ll be killed.”

There were 30-40 people before the court and all of them pled guilty except for two. The judge said, “You two will need to stay after this to talk to me,” and everyone else left. There was one set of headphones for everyone in the room; when I finished, I passed the headphones to the next person. The only option I had was to say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ but there was not time to tell the judge I was afraid to return to my home or that I was fleeing danger. The judge said I needed to say in the detention center for ten days and then they would deport me.

I thought to myself, ‘When I get back to the detention center, I’ll ask someone what to do, because there are a lot of people in this courtroom and only one judge.’

I went back to the detention center and talked to the immigration officer and asked when I would have the option to tell someone that I could not return home.

She was a woman and she told me, “You were supposed to tell the judge when you went to the courtroom that you were asking for asylum!”

I told her that I had no idea, that there had not been time, and that I had already told the first person who took my information at la hielera. I was crying because I was on day seven out of ten and I was so afraid to go back to Guatemala.

I now know a little bit about trauma, and how it affects the brain. I was traumatized to think about going back and being killed, and traumatized at the idea of staying in the detention center with the woman who wanted to kill me with a dagger—I was so confused. I didn’t know what to do or what to say.

Three more days passed and nothing happened. It was December and there were several delays because of the holidays. On day eleven, an immigration van arrived for seven people. I was one of the seven people.

They called me by our numbers, told us to grab our things, and said, “Let’s go.”

I asked them, “Where are we going?”

They said, “We’re taking you to another place and then we’re going to deport you.”

I began to cry. We got in a van and went to Taylor, Texas, to another detention center. I thought I was going back to Guatemala that day.

Instead, a woman registered me again and I asked her, “Why am I here?”

She said, “You’re going to wait here to be deported. We don’t know how long, because we need to gather enough people to fill an airplane.”

I told her, “I cannot go back to my country. I told the border patrol official when I was taken into custody.”

She said, “There will be a piece of paper in your room; you can fill it out, but I think it will be too late. You were supposed to tell officials that you are seeking asylum earlier.”

“I know. They did not listen to me.”

“The only thing I can do for you is to tell you to fill out this paper.”

They took me to the place where I was supposed to sleep. My roommate, a woman from El Salvador, had already been there for four months.

She showed me where the asylum-seeker papers were when I asked—there were many papers on the wall. The next day, I took the paper to the officials and asked them, “Can I appeal my deportation?”

Eight days later, a woman from the Guatemalan consulate called me at the detention center. She said, “You are supposed to be deported on January 7.” I told her—how no one listened to me when I tried to explain that I could not go back home, how many times people had told me that helping me was not their job, how scared I was. She said, “I don’t know if I can help, but I’ll try.”

Six or seven days later, I got a note from my consulate—I was able to appeal.

I went to an interview and told my story. They told me I had to pay a fine; I had no money. They said I needed an American sponsor. I have a cousin in Miami; I called him, but he was not able to help me. He was in the process of getting his citizenship and couldn’t sponsor me with only a green card. But he had a friend in Houston who could help. He called her and she said immediately, “Yes, I would love to help!”

This friend paid the fine—$4000. I don’t know how I’ll ever repay her for her goodness to me. When I think back to the whole process I went through—the suffering in Guatemala, the pain I endured—it was hard. But I think it was worth the difficulty because I’ve met such wonderful people, like my friend who sponsored me and taught me so many words. I got a work permit, I’ve learned English, I’ve learned so much about myself.

I’m still in the process of trying to get my asylum. I will go before the judge again in November. I hope they give it to me. I don’t want to go back to Guatemala to die.